Lib at Large: Rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson set for Marin gig

One of the things I like to do in this column is let you know when someone special is coming to town, someone who holds an important place in popular music history, and who may or may not come this way again. Wanda Jackson, the 76-year-old Queen of Rockabilly, certainly fits that description.

Jackson, who still performs 60 to 80 concerts a year, plays Rancho Nicasio on Aug. 17 for a Sunday barbecue on the West Marin roadhouse's lawn.

At the urging of Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen, Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 as an "early influence."

"For girls with guitars, Wanda was the beginning of rock 'n' roll," Roseanne Cash said, introducing Jackson at the induction ceremonies. "Every young woman I know, musician or otherwise, worships her as the prototype, the first female rock star."

As a teenager, Jackson crossed over from country music into rock at the urging of the young man she was dating at the time, Elvis Presley. She and the future King of Rock 'n' Roll toured together in the 1950s.

"I jumped into that genre at his insistence," she recalled one morning this week, speaking from her home in Oklahoma City. "I really didn't think I could pull it off. But my daddy always gave me good counsel, and he thought Elvis was right. He encouraged me to try it."

Jackson can summon a velvety growl that's suited to the gritty sound of rock, and she certainly had the looks, breaking from the cowgirl outfits women country singers wore in those days by wearing high heels and glamorous fringed dresses that shimmied when she moved on stage.

"They call me the first sex symbol of country music," she said with a modest giggle.

Rough road

But it wasn't easy for a woman in those early days of rock, when the charts were dominated by male contemporaries like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly.

"This was still the 1950s in America," she said. "The mindset was totally different. It was frustrating for me at times. The only songs I had available to me were songs I wrote myself, and the disc jockeys wouldn't play them on the radio. They wouldn't help me out. I had to fight for everything I got."

She fought for four years, finally breaking through in 1960, making history with the Top 40 hit "Let's Have a Party," a song Elvis had recorded three years before in the movie "Lovin' You."

"It was unusual that my very first hit in America was one of Elvis' songs," she said. She still has a ring Elvis gave her when they going together and occasionally wears it on a chain around her neck. Her father, who accompanied her on tour, liked Elvis and trusted him with his daughter. Not that there was a lot of time for hanky-panky.

"My daddy kept me on a pretty short lease," she said, laughing softly at the memory. "He would allow us to go to a movie if it was a matinee. But we were working every night. In those days, you'd go out for two weeks and you might get two days off. That meant that you traveled all day and at night you worked and the next day you got up and did it all over again. There wasn't a lot of time for social activities."

After the success of "Let's Have a Party," Capitol Records released several albums featuring her '50s rock songs, including "Tongue Tied" and "Riot in Cell Block No. 9." She had a No. 1 hit in Japan with the single "Fujiyama Mama." In 1963, she recorded an album, "Two Sides of Wanda," featuring both rock and country songs. It earned her a first Grammy nomination for best female country vocal performance. After that, she returned almost exclusively to country music, scoring a string of hits over the next decade.

Married right

In 1961, she married Wendell Goodman, a former IBM programmer who became her manager and still handles her business. In October, they will celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary. When, they were getting ready to drive to Texas for a weekend of gigs before flying here for the Rancho Nicasio show.

"I married the right guy," she said. "I didn't know at the time how important he was going to be. I had always figured that when I got married, I would have to give up my career. That was the mindset of those days. But he said he would like me to stay in the music field and he would like to help me."

Reviving her career

Her husband wasn't the first or last man to want to help her. She became the latest legacy artist to be discovered by a younger generation when superstar rocker Jack White sought her out, producing her 2011 album, "The Party Ain't Over," a retro collection of carefully selected cover songs.

"Like his 'Van Lear Rose' collaboration with Loretta Lynn, White surrounds one of his heroines with the kind of sizzling and muscular instrumental backing you'd expect from a brash rock upstart," said a review in the Los Angeles Times music blog Pop & Hiss.

White respected Jackson's born-again Christianity by including the gospel song "Dust on the Bible" as an antidote to the racier Amy Winehouse cover "You Know That I'm No Good." Recorded with a powerhouse 12-piece horn band, the album, coupled with White's celebrity, have given Jackson a third-act career revival that she could not have predicted and never expected.

"Everywhere I go now I play to a sold-out house," she said. "He did a lot for my career, to get it turned back around. I'm drawing a younger audience. Some of them are younger than my own children. And they show me so much respect."

Jackson's latest album was produced by another young admirer, Justin Townes Earle, the singer-songwriter son of roots music star Steve Earle. Recorded in Nashville, that album is appropriately titled "Unfinished Business" because Jackson, in her seventh decade, ain't done yet.

"I won't want to ever stop," she said. "And so far, my husband and I are enjoying good health, so we don't see any reason to quit. We've slowed down some this year and we're not sure how much we want to work. But, with rockabilly so popular now, people like to see the original artists. And there's not very many of us left."